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About Dave on Design

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Re: About Dave on Design

#21

Post by 50 »

gwern wrote: post #20
manuelmoreale wrote: post #3

One of the stated goals was "Be light" and yet the author managed to make a 1.2Mb page for what is just text. Another one is "Beautiful typography" and yet there's a justified text without hyphens that creates some atrocious spacing. This site has incredibly good intentions and plenty of room for improvements.

Yeah, I highlighted those (and most of the other points in the comments here) last week in my critique: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36625742 Presumably Dave just hasn't gotten around to it - that's how personal sites are, they fit only into the cracks of one's time-energy. No one to report a bug to but yourself...

re: your site, don't you think the standard for epigraphs (and quotes in general) should be non-italicized, i.e., left to how they were originally written, with or without emphasis?

Re: About Dave on Design

#22

Post by manuelmoreale »

gwern wrote: post #20
manuelmoreale wrote: post #3

One of the stated goals was "Be light" and yet the author managed to make a 1.2Mb page for what is just text. Another one is "Beautiful typography" and yet there's a justified text without hyphens that creates some atrocious spacing. This site has incredibly good intentions and plenty of room for improvements.

Yeah, I highlighted those (and most of the other points in the comments here) last week in my critique: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36625742 Presumably Dave just hasn't gotten around to it - that's how personal sites are, they fit only into the cracks of one's time-energy. No one to report a bug to but yourself...

Personal sites are a tricky beast. Especially if you’re someone who’s obsessed with details. I spent way too much time on mine but to get to a point where I was happy it took me years. So I’m sure Dave will get there eventually.

Re: About Dave on Design

#23

Post by euroderf »

bradrn wrote: post #4

> … forces use of ‘house style’ by adding dipthongs in words like ‘encyclopædia’ Nitpick: firstly, it’s spelled ‘diphthong’. Secondly, ⟨æ⟩ is a ligature, not a diphthong (at least in English). Diphthongs are sounds made up of a smooth transition from one vowel to another, so I can see what caused this mistake… but it’s a little jarring to see the term misused in an essay about typographical conventions.

Some words (and maybe with British spelling) look unearthly this way. Manœuvre. Diarrhœa.

Re: About Dave on Design

#24

Post by [deleted] »

manuelmoreale wrote: post #15
the-printer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m seeing the same thing. Sorts Mill Goudy also comes in a single weight and it looks like the author is forcing CSS font-weight values beyond 400 for their headings. Off-topic: I think UX blogs give me the heebie jeebies.

> I think UX blogs give me the heebie jeebies. Interesting. Why is that if you don’t mind me asking

[deleted]

Re: About Dave on Design

#25

Post by the-printer »

manuelmoreale wrote: post #15
the-printer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m seeing the same thing. Sorts Mill Goudy also comes in a single weight and it looks like the author is forcing CSS font-weight values beyond 400 for their headings. Off-topic: I think UX blogs give me the heebie jeebies.

> I think UX blogs give me the heebie jeebies. Interesting. Why is that if you don’t mind me asking

This reaction isn't targeted toward all UX blogs...but some of the one's that I've come across go a little too far with their rhetoric. Some of them have this overt "romanticist" bend to them that can come across as overblown from a user's perspective. The constant appeals toward aesthetic ("beauty, elegance") and emotion ("sparking joy") put me off.

I don't mean to downplay the effects that good and bad UX design have on people. It matters, but where it matters most (rental property portals, banks, healthcare industry, etc.) is where things like "beauty" and "joy" matter the least. This leads me to question the type of software, web pages, etc. that these sort of designers/bloggers are speaking on behalf of and how these kind of blogs run parallel to other hand-wavy bodies of writing authored in the tech industry, or any other industry for that matter.

Granted, there's nothing wrong with aesthetic appeals and the like, but if you're going to make one it shouldn't sound like a Steve Jobs WWDC keynote speech generated by Bard. I feel like there's an intangible quality to expressions on aesthetics in a way (although most of the time there are identifiable reasons for their appeal if you think hard enough). Some UX blogs lack that.

I felt like this was one of them.

Re: About Dave on Design

#26

Post by gwern »

50 wrote: post #21
gwern wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I highlighted those (and most of the other points in the comments here) last week in my critique: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36625742 Presumably Dave just hasn't gotten around to it - that's how personal sites are, they fit only into the cracks of one's time-energy. No one to report a bug to but yourself...

re: your site, don't you think the standard for epigraphs (and quotes in general) should be non-italicized, i.e., left to how they were originally written, with or without emphasis?

Maybe, but if you don't italicize them, they risk looking a lot like blockquotes, and lack a good way of distinguishing the ascription/source. Italics are nice and often used for epigraphs, so it's not a weird choice.

Re: About Dave on Design

#27

Post by zvr »

esquivalience wrote: post #7
bradrn wrote: post #4

> … forces use of ‘house style’ by adding dipthongs in words like ‘encyclopædia’ Nitpick: firstly, it’s spelled ‘diphthong’. Secondly, ⟨æ⟩ is a ligature, not a diphthong (at least in English). Diphthongs are sounds made up of a smooth transition from one vowel to another, so I can see what caused this mistake… but it’s a little jarring to see the term misused in an essay about typographical conventions.

In typography the term diphthong also. Means the character itself - "a digraph representing the sound of a diphthong or single vowel". I can't speak to the possible typo in the word itself, but I believe it might be a old spelling of the same word.

No, it cannot be an old spelling, since it comes from Greek: an initial "di-" (δι- from dual, two) and then phthong (φθόγγος, voice). So the two initial letters of the second part are phi and theta.

Re: About Dave on Design

#28

Post by beezlewax »

manuelmoreale wrote: post #3

One of the stated goals was "Be light" and yet the author managed to make a 1.2Mb page for what is just text. Another one is "Beautiful typography" and yet there's a justified text without hyphens that creates some atrocious spacing. This site has incredibly good intentions and plenty of room for improvements.

Yeh justified text reads horribly almost always online. It has it's place but doesn't work well here in my opinion.

Re: About Dave on Design

#29

Post by bradrn »

euroderf wrote: post #23
bradrn wrote: post #4

> … forces use of ‘house style’ by adding dipthongs in words like ‘encyclopædia’ Nitpick: firstly, it’s spelled ‘diphthong’. Secondly, ⟨æ⟩ is a ligature, not a diphthong (at least in English). Diphthongs are sounds made up of a smooth transition from one vowel to another, so I can see what caused this mistake… but it’s a little jarring to see the term misused in an essay about typographical conventions.

Some words (and maybe with British spelling) look unearthly this way. Manœuvre. Diarrhœa.

But that’s ⟨œ⟩, not ⟨æ⟩. They’re different letters.
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